The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award-winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day.
The lead character, Aunty Jack was a unique comic creation — obese, moustachioed and gravel-voiced, part trucker and part pantomime dame — who habitually solved any problem by knocking people unconscious or threatening to "rip yer bloody arms off". Visually, she was unmistakable, dressed in a huge, tent-like blue velvet dress, football socks, workboots, and a golden boxing glove on her right hand. She rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and referred to everyone as "me little lovelies" — when she was not uttering her familiar threat: "I'll rip yer bloody arms off!", a phrase which immediately passed into the vernacular. The character was devised and played by Grahame Bond and was partly inspired by his overbearing Uncle Jack, whom he had disliked as a child, his grandfather Ben Doyle, and Dot Strong, the ABC's last official tea lady.
Background
Bond was already an accomplished writer, producer, comedian, singer, songwriter and guitarist by the time he graduated with an architecture degree from the University of Sydney. He cut his teeth writing and performing as a founder member and leading light of the university's legendary Architecture Revues from 1964 to 1969. It was here that he met and became friends with other Sydney students including scriptwriter Geoffrey Atherden, television and film director Maurice Murphy and Peter Weir, who would go on to become an internationally acclaimed film director. Through these stage revues Bond also met his longtime musical, writing and acting partner Rory O'Donoghue, who had begun his performing career playing The Artful Dodger in a Sydney production of the musical Oliver! as well as being the lead singer and guitarist in the Sydney rock bands The Pogs and Oakapple Day. O'Donoghue was 14 at the time he met Bond, when The Pogs were brought in to provide musical backing for one of the Architecture Revues.
After graduating, Bond and friends continued working together on a wide range of projects in radio, theatre, TV and film. He collaborated on several short films and stage pieces with Weir, and wrote and played in a number of stage comedies and revues. The success of Bond's work in the Architecture Revues led to a professional stage revue for the PACT Theatre Company, Balloon Dubloon (1969) with Weir, which in turn led to an invitation from festival director Sir Robert Helpmann to stage a revue, Drip Dry Dreams at the Adelaide Festival and Richbrooke.
Through Bob Allnutt, a staffer at the PACT Theatre Company who also worked for the ABC's Religious Affairs Department, Weir, Bond was one of a group of people commissioned to produce a TV special, Man on a Green Bike, a fantasy that examined three different views of Christmas; this screened on ABC-TV at the end of December 1969. The 50-minute film, which is Bond's first known TV appearance, was co-written by and starred Bond and Weir, with Geoff Malone, James Dellit, and Anna Nygh. The story concerned three men, once friends sharing many adventures, who are now mayors of three cities—medieval Ackley, the futuristic Cadmium, and Petal Lake, a community reminiscent of the 1930s. Into their midst comes the strange figure of Mr. Maloon, a man travelling on a heavily laden green bike, whose presence disturbs and embarrasses the mayors.
During 1970 Bond, Weir and co. created and performed the revue Filth at the Phillip St Revue, followed by Hamlet On Ice at the Nimrod Theatre. Bond's friendship with Weir led to him writing the music for the three-part AFI Award-winning 1970 film Three To Go (in which he also had a small acting role), for which Weir directed one segment. Bond also provided the music and played a leading role in Weir's first film, the 1971 short feature Homesdale.
Origin
Aunty Jack was created for a proposed ABC Radio children's radio series, The Aunty Jack Show, commissioned by Paddy Conroy (former head of ABC TV and now cable channel manager). It was intended to replace the long-running children's radio series The Argonauts Club, which was about to be cancelled. The new series did not go to air because ABC executives felt that the Aunty Jack character and some of Bond's songs were "inappropriate" for young listeners.